American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten complains that writing her newly released book “almost killed” her. But based on AFT’s own financial records, it’s the union members who suffered the actual injury.
Hyperbolically titled, “Why Fascists Fear Teachers,” the book was published last September by an imprint of Penguin Random House and represents Weingarten’s first literary effort.
It opens by name-dropping Adolf Hitler three words in, spends its early pages comparing the Nazi occupation of Norway to the current state of American education, and argues that anyone who disagrees with the author’s vision for public schools is, in some meaningful sense, a fascist.
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Weingarten insists her point is “not to label people,” and she’s certainly entitled to her opinion. But just as a matter of full disclosure, it might put things in perspective if readers understood that the money spent to produce and market her jeremiad, all of it, was appropriated from the union’s coffers.
Freedom Foundation researcher Maxford Nelsen combed through the AFT’s most recent Form LM-2 — the annual financial disclosure unions file with the U.S. Department of Labor — and uncovered a detailed accounting of how member dues were spent producing a book that doesn’t even address workplace representation, let alone improve the circumstances of the workers whose hard-earned dues made it possible.
Ghostwriting work alone cost more than $400,000. AFT paid that sum to Sally Kohn, a progressive commentator who openly advertises her services for “high-end thought leadership books,” during the exact period Weingarten’s book was being written.
In the acknowledgments, Weingarten characterizes Kohn as an “indispensable” thought partner.
The LM-2 calls the payments “consulting fees” and classifies them as representational activities, which raises its own questions about what representing members has to do with funding a union president’s political manifesto.
Then there are the legal bills. AFT paid nearly $1 million to a New York law firm whose attorney is likewise thanked in the book’s acknowledgments for reviewing the manuscript. When the New York Post asked about it, an AFT spokesperson claimed the review was done pro bono, but the LM-2 says otherwise.
There was also $6,000 for fact-checking, $5,212 for a single-author photograph taken by a Washington photographer whose exclusive clientele includes cabinet secretaries and the pope, and $64,090 to a literary agency that lists AFT, not Weingarten, as its client.
Nearly 30 AFT staff members are thanked in the acknowledgments, raising questions about their role in the book’s creation. Meanwhile, travel costs for Weingarten’s nationwide promotional tour are not separately itemized but were almost certainly substantial.
In other words, AFT members seemingly paid for everything. Weingarten may not have contributed a dollar of her own to the enterprise.
When Weingarten promoted the book in AFT’s own house organ, she promised half the proceeds would go to the union’s Disaster Relief Fund and Educational Foundation. She repeated the claim at a virtual AFT event.
The LM-2, however, shows that those two charities received $125,000 combined — exactly one-third, not half, of the $375,000 in royalty advances AFT collected.
The other $125,000 went to an entity called Teachers Want What Kids Need, LLC, a Delaware corporation with no website, no public presence, and no history in any AFT financial disclosure before 2025.
It was incorporated on June 28, 2024, right around when Weingarten supposedly began working on the book. Payments to the LLC were timed and structured to mirror the charity contributions exactly, made on the same dates in corresponding amounts.
When the New York Post pressed AFT on it, the union conceded those payments were for Weingarten.
She said she wanted to be “transparent and clear” about the finances, but routed her personal royalties through a shell company that didn’t exist until she started writing the book, with no name attached and no public footprint of any kind.
AFT has 1.8 million members. Most are teachers who pay dues expecting contract support, grievance representation, and basic advocacy on their behalf.
Teacher pay in real terms has barely moved in 50 years. The gap between what teachers earn and what comparably educated professionals earn hit a record 26.9% in 2024.
These are the people whose dues paid for a ghostwriter, a top-shelf photographer, nearly $1 million in legal fees, and a book tour so their union president could publish her crackpot opinions about the president and quietly pocket one-third of the royalties through a Delaware LLC.
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Weingarten may well have contributed nothing financially to producing the book, while her members contributed everything. But when the money came back in, she made sure she took her share off the top of the pile.
The members deserve a refund, and Weingarten is the one who owes it to them.
Aaron Withe is Freedom Foundation’s CEO.